Don't Know Where TO Start? Wisdom FOR LIFE ON RESPONSIBILITY, FATHERHOOD, & UTILIZING YOUR MORNINGS

Today I wanted to do something a little bit different. On social media, we'll throw out questions for people to answer for things that they want to learn, things they want us to cover more of, and just general questions. We compile them into different categories so that we  kind of have an idea of what people are thinking and what people wanna learn more about, some of them are personal, theoretical, and real estate specifically related. I think they're good life questions in general, and it gives a good view kind of my own thoughts and also an opportunity for you to respond.

Many of the questions that we get are actually already covered on the Saint site, in our resources section. I definitely encourage you to check that out at saintinvestment.com/resources. There's a ton of information, videos, audio blog, posts free, and e-books all of its free there. It's a really good opportunity for you to get a lot of your questions answered there as well. 

Let's jump into it for today. 

First off for those that don't know me, my name is Nick DeAngelo with Saint investment group. We currently have over 150 million in real estate assets under management and raising $100 million more to purchase more real estate assets. 

These answers come from that background so  that you have some perspective on where these answers are coming from and the first question is what do you believe about taking responsibility when to know when it's your responsibility versus other people's responsibility, and how to respond in different situations? Well, there's a lot to that question and there's a lot of different perspectives that you can have from that, but I'm gonna answer it from my perspective. And the easiest answer to that question from my perspective is, that I sit in a leadership role at Saint investment, and what do I think about responsibility? I think everything is my responsibility. 

Literally, if you've ever heard the saying the shit falls downward, actually in reality, when you're sitting in more of a leadership role, the higher that leadership role, the more shit falls upwards. 

That means that you are responsible for every single thing that's below you on the totem pole and not vice versa. So that's kind of the big picture approach is just to understand that everything below you is in your sphere of influence and is your responsibility not to get it right every time. But to make positive that it's fixed for the future and to improve it on an ongoing basis. 

Now, to drill down into the specifics, in my experience in companies and we've built and sold a handful of them at this stage, what delegation is assumed to be typically by management and it is handing off a task and then somebody at a different level completing that task. So while conceptually that's okay, that misses some of the biggest nuances of this and the first thing is insane. Amounts of detail and clarity for the employee to that the task is getting handed off. 

If something is being delegated to that employee, they need absolute clarity of what success looks like for that task and true delegation is handing off the responsibility of that task to them. So the outcome is on their plate, but you must be extremely clear with them and part of that is intervals and time. They have to know exactly what's expected in what period of time. 

We found most helpful in our companies is some kind of task management software that is companywide, so that everybody's on the same page and can read from the same book, that level of transparency to see who's on task, what their tasks are, and that functions, not a lot of the concerns that other employees will have because it's all out there. Everybody knows who's responsible for what. So you'll get feedback just based on that transparency basis. The other thing is when you're using a specific quality software, then you have set dates. 

When that task was assigned, what the different intervals were because they are required to update it along the way? And it also lets you be more hands-off and get out of their way and stop micromanaging your employees. But if I'm in a leadership role, they still take the responsibility for that task, but the ultimate global responsibilities are on my shoulders. So how do I balance that if somebody's dropping the ball on tasking that was assigned to them? Then it's my responsibility to hand off and reassign to make positive, that important thing gets done. So as far as the part of the question of how to respond, the answer is whatever's best for the company and whatever's best for the team. 

For me, that included always sitting down with the employee and being very clear if something was falling through the cracks. So we were all clear on the decisions that I made to reevaluate and reassess and move that tasking to someone else. 

Overall, there's a ton written on this and many different, amazing books and one of my favorite discussions on delegation is in the book clockwork by Michael Michalowicz.  

So they do have a really good perspective on how to set up delegation in a way that is mostly smooth for company fluidity and company consistency and so I really like how they structure that.

 I would definitely recommend it if you're interested more in the delegation, it's worth checking out that book. Then, the next question is, how has being a father changed you as an entrepreneur, your mission, your vision, et cetera? So this is really good and there have definitely been some massive changes in my life really previously, prior to becoming a father, I just kind of work as much as I felt, which was quite a bit, it's a huge success and built some really cool things and some really cool companies that we later sold. 

But in the wake of becoming a father, I looked back and kind of evaluated what that scheduling was and what that structure was and it was much more loosey-goosey because it didn't need to be tight. 

There didn't need to be set hours. I could go to the gym at 8:00 PM till 10:00 PM and it didn't really matter and I could get a late start the next day, et cetera. 

So, scheduling could be much more loose and was my life pre-children now that I have kids, I want to freaking see my kids at night and I want to, at least even on my most busy days, just to hang out with my kids for a little while, bond connect vibe for a bit. I wanna pray with them before they go to bed that want to be there for those end-of-day activities, at least on less busy days and II wanna be there to have dinner with them and to enjoy some free time and to have some more of an open schedule just to kind of do whatever to engage with them.  But how would I achieve that? If my previous schedule literally just went, go, go from the second I woke up till the time I went to bed and those hours all fluctuated and the scheduling was all over the place. Well, it's that my whole life is structured much more rigidly now and I pretty much do the same things at the same time, and every day. 

It allows me to do just to get the things in that are most important to me in a structured way that allows me to do all of it to some degree. Now there are definitely days I miss something and that things are better than others or my gym sessions suck, but I kick butt in the office or I'm just tired and kind of suck all day. Those definitely happen, but I get a lot more done just by having the same wake-up time, the same go-to bedtime and the same general schedule throughout the day. I definitely say scheduling for me was one of the biggest changes in becoming a father. 

Now on a big scale, I'm more of like a theory, big picture idea side. Being a father was a huge gift and a benefit to my idea of legacy and impact on the world because before I had kids, I wasn't really thinking next generation and what the 50-year plan looked like for business or for assets or for net worth. But now that I do have kids, I am thinking about that and it changes the perspective and it changes the moves I make on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis because I'm thinking about these things like what are the skills and assets that I could bring into the future mini decades down the line, or could benefit my kids or the world that they live in further down the line. 

That’s why I was not a huge environmentalist. I liked being in nature. Now I'm actually thinking very much like what's the future of the planet look like, like what air are my kids gonna breathe? What water are they going to drink from the financial side? What opportunities are they gonna have that I could help provide them? What kind of education can they get? What experiences can they have in the future? So I've always been a big fan of leverage in my own life and how to do one thing that leverages into something much bigger or broader in your life? But there's a whole different idea of leverage when there's another generation that you're considering how to put them in positions that offer exponential leverage for their future and I think that's really big. So the two biggest fatherhood improvements I've made in my life, I think are tightening up scheduling to where everything runs at the same time. 

The train freaking runs on time and I get more things in that way. Then the second is thinking of things on a much larger grander longer scale because there's somebody that can benefit at the end of that in an even bigger way. And it's your freaking kids you'll do anything for your children. Right? So that's kind of how I think about it.

Then the next question is, when are you the most productive in your day and week? So the kind of like the witty cheeky snarky answer is whenever I'm most planned out on my goals and most focused on those is when I'm most effective. Now that's not really the question or the nature of the question and I get that but to answer the question directly, that morning I truly believe are almost everyone's most productive, most focused, most like laser pinpoint accuracy on what they're doing most clear minded, I think it's mornings. So for me, because that's definitely the case, I try to front-load most of my important big picture, big progress stuff to the morning hours, the first half of the day, at least maybe the first 75% of the day, And then I kind of close the day out with more meetings and more emails and more follow ups and catch ups and what that allows me to do is use the moments where my brain is the crispest and sharp and laser focused and intense to get the most important things done and then I can kind of get the other check boxes checked throughout the later end of the day, but to touch base on the kind of like SNAR year cheekier answer I would share the first book that really helped me with goals and planning and outlining a 12 week year and the concept is essentially taking the goals that you have for an entire year and squeezes them into one quarter and then breaking them and down into weekly deliverables. 

So it's really not a new concept of taking big goals and doing bite-size steps. But what it did for me was just that every day I know exactly the steps I need to be taking and those steps add up into something much more massive. That's been super helpful for me and super focusing. So when I get up the day's not a mystery, I'm not chasing my tail. It's like, I know exactly what I'm doing and the more clear I am on those goals and those individual one-step-at-a-time tasks, the more I seemed to get done consistently. So for me, no matter what the schedule looks like being clear on those and tackling the biggest stuff first has been really beneficial. 

Another question, how have your goals and vision for the future changed over time? So I think one of the biggest ways is just having perspective for me in my twenties. You know, my mid-twenties is when I really started making some pretty decent money. So for me, this kind of goes back to the idea that you operate at like different levels of consciousness at different times. So a lower level consciousness of success might be like stunting them fools, right? Like here's my Lambo and, you see my watches, like you see this house, like kind of like the flexing materialism. So that might be like a lower level spiritual paradigm where it's just about like that quick competition, like you being better than everyone and like you being the coolest kid and then there's kind of like the higher level paradigms as you think, bigger and more broad and less self-centered right and those might be things like charitable contributions and ways to benefit society or more like spiritual big questions, like things that are internal and kind of things that transcend more of a material level and go into more of a global improvement level. Just a bigger, broader perspective on things as a whole. 

Also, I don't think people are in one camper or the other where somebody just wakes up every morning and Ferrari is all they think about and somebody else wakes up and they just have the most perfect Nirvana soul that just wants to save the whole world because in my experience people oscillate kind of differently back and forth between those and I certainly do as well. But what I can tell you definitely about my goals and my vision for the future is that it's less money centered and it's bigger picture centered. 

So it's more of zooming out when I was younger. I didn't care about politics. I didn't really care about the environment and I was much more self-centered in the thought of like always me and what can I experience? What can I have? What can I do? And now that I've been fortunate enough to hit certain hurdles, whether that's financially in business or just experiences I've had in my life, that I thought were one's peak experiences. and that would just be a whole new level. Now it's kind of like, I want to experience the world the way where I can give back more, to think about a bigger picture. So that's led me to things like starting the DeAngelo foundation and starting other philanthropic things and giving back to things like politics, to help improve certain areas and to improve things that I want to see better in our country and better in the world.

And that also a big part of that has just been being very careful about what my body and what my mind ingests. So, an example of that might be in the past a very specific type of trip where it was very materialistic. It was very experiencing a very certain type of trip, whether it was clubbed and, nightlife and all that stuff. Maybe these days I'm leaning a little bit more towards like a spiritual trip or some kind of self-improvement or something that I can actually see tangibly for the rest of my life or for a longer period of time. 

And that wraps it up for today. Those were really awesome questions. And I really like those big picture ideas and those big picture thoughts. Again, we are typically taking polls and questions on Instagram. So if you're not following me on Instagram, check that out so that we can connect and you guys can input any questions that you might have a huge chunk of the content we post is fundamentals of investing specifically in real estate. There are tons of amazing videos that are ultra high-level in-depth information on investing at all levels. So check out our playlist on Youtube. We have a ton of stuff in there that's really high quality and great real estate content. So cheers and stay hungry.

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